Family and Education

b. by 1491. m. (1) Alice, da. and h. of Edmund Temersham; (2) Anne, da. of Nicholas Waring of Shrewsbury, Salop; 2da.2

Offices Held

Clerk of the spicery by 1515, surveyor of the works, Chester and Flints. 5 May 1515-d., clerk of the green cloth by 1523-d.3

Biography

Nicholas Hurleston came from the Cheshire family which monopolized the surveyorship of the royal works in the county palatine for nearly half a century. He was almost certainly a son of the Richard Hurleston, whom he succeeded in the post, and grandson of the previous holder Hugh. Until his death in 1509 Hugh Hurleston was lessee of a corn mill and a fulling mill on the river Dee and Hurleston himself secured this lease in 1514. His working life, however, was to be spent in London (where he is first glimpsed in 1512), not in the north, and he exercised his surveyorship through a deputy. The family had a connexion with the earls of Derby, and Hurleston held for life a manor from the 2nd Earl. Through his first marriage he acquired an interest in some property in East Anglia and early in 1531 he obtained the lease of the manor of Baldwins, Kent.4

The clerk of the spicery could expect in time to become one of the clerks of the green cloth, as Nicholas Hurleston did. This was an important office, held by men of some standing. In 1523 Hurleston was sufficiently wealthy to be liable to the third payment—on lands and fees of £50 and more—of the subsidy granted in that year; in 1526 he was assessed at £60. Once at least he was arrested for debt, having stood surety for another man who had defaulted, and in August 1525 he received a pardon and release of all outlawries and judgments at the suit of Margery Hurleston, widow and executrix of William Hurleston: what relationship he bore to them does not appear.5

Hurleston was elected to the Parliament of 1529 by Rochester, presumably on the nomination of the comptroller of the Household, Sir Henry Guildford, who procured his own return as one of the knights of the shire for Kent, but Hurleston did not survive for long as a Member. He made his will on 27 Nov. 1531. After asking for burial in the church of the Blackfriars, London, he bequeathed £40 each to his daughters Anne and Elizabeth, and left the residue of his goods and all his lands (unspecified) to his executors, first for the discharge of his debts and legacies and then for the profit of his wife and children. The executors were his wife Anne, his father-in-law Nicholas Waring, and Thomas Tamworth gentleman, and the witnesses Thomas Bentley, doctor of physic, and the parson and parish priest of the church of St. Mary Aldermary, London. The will was proved and administration granted to the widow on 28 June 1535, but six months later she renounced it and it was granted instead to Henry Digby of London, gentleman. Hurleston was replaced as surveyor of the works for Chester and Flint by one Robert Lawrence on 20 Dec. 1531 and as Member for Rochester by Edmund Page by the spring of 1533.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Req.2/4/359; PCC 25 Hogen.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, ii, iii; The King’s Works, iii. 417.
• 4. The King’s Works, iii. 170; DKR, xxxix. 96, 158; LP Hen. VIII, i, ii, v; City of London RO, Guildhall, rep. 2, f. 135.
• 5. Trans. American Philosophical Soc. n.s. xxxv(1), 7-11; LP Hen. VIII, iv; C1/777/21.
• 6. PCC 25 Hogen; The King’s Works, iii. 417.